Laura & Dan’s Fun & Funky Willowdale Estate Wedding

Welcome to a new week — and month! — of funky wedding inspiration! Today’s featured celebration has a couple of familiar faces… Laura and Dan! Remember their super fun e-session where they were photographed in bed with Dan’s mini-me Muppet “Little D”? Well they recently got married in a meaningful double-officiant interfaith ceremony with the beautiful Willowdale Estate as backdrop. The twosome incorporated elements in their fun reception details that completely reflected them & their shared profession, teaching — whimsical mini chalkboard table numbers, children’s books as centerpieces, hand-painted rocks as escort cards, goldfish crackers, etc. Of course their wedding wouldn’t have also been complete without the presence of “Little D” so watch out for him in the photos (oh he makes many appearances).

How sweet was Laura and Dan’s first look? As mentioned above, you’ve already met the adorable couple via their In-Bed-with-a-Muppet + Downtown Boston Stroll E-session months ago so they need no further introduction (but please go ahead and click on the link to reacquaint yourselves with them. )

From this point on I will let the lovely Laura tell you all about their wedding and what made it uniquely theirs:

I always felt silly when I said this, but our theme was basically…us! Something that we did that was a little exhausting, but very meaningful and in the end totally worth it, was that we had two officiants, since we were having an interfaith ceremony (Dan is Jewish and I am Methodist). We asked the cantor who bar mitzvah’d Dan and the minister from the church I grew up in (in Phoenix) to officiate together and it was really special to work with both of them and to have the opportunity to combine our two faiths and traditions. It was challenging at times, especially having to coordinate someone from out of state, but the two of us worked together and we did everything possible to make it special and unforgettable, not just for the two of us, but for our families and friends, too.

We wanted the details to represent who we are, so we included our favorite books as a part of our centerpieces, a Pepperidge Farm goldfish bar in honor of our favorite snack, a mad lib RSVP card to help represent our shared profession – teaching, a thank you note at each seat honoring our family and friends, etc.

The other aspect that was really important to us was that our guests have FUN! That desire guided us to our amazing DJ, who also sang during cocktail hour! Everyone really enjoyed it. On top of that, Dan’s three uncles played the music during our ceremony, Dan and his sister Lia sang during the reception, our DJ even let Dan’s cousin Asher rap towards the end! It was a casual, party atmosphere that allowed everyone to let loose and have fun on the dance floor!

Wedding wisdom and parting words from the lovebirds:

Surround yourself with people you love and trust. This may seem obvious, but I think it’s true not just for family and your wedding party, but for your vendors, too! With every aspect of our wedding, we trusted our instincts and picked people that we genuinely wanted to spend time with, but also tried to be well prepared and crystal clear with everyone about what we wanted and how we wanted our day to go. We trusted our photographer, Kristin Chalmers, so much that when she recommended DJ Dan Sky, we went ahead and hired him, sight unseen! We were a little nervous about going completely on her word with something as crucial as the DJ, but he turned out to be absolutely perfect! And because everyone knew our plan and our wishes, especially Kristin and our coordinator Monique from Willowdale, we had the easiest, least-stressful day possible! We wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Huge thanks as always Kristin for sending your gorgeous images my way, and congratulations Laura and Dan! I wish you a lifetime of married bliss!